


In Which There Definitely Isn't Any Tuna

by bloovanmeer



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloovanmeer/pseuds/bloovanmeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eduardo sits at Mark's table one Tuesday lunchtime. Mark definitely isn't having feelings about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which There Definitely Isn't Any Tuna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tictactoews](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tictactoews/gifts).



> To jean_iris, the brilliant person that she is, for the TSN Holiday Fic Exchange 2012. I am forever indebted to Elsa for making sure this is readable.

High school, as Mark has come to realise, is full of contradictions.

High school is where you’re supposed to find yourself. Figure out where you fit in the wheels of the machine, which cog you’re meant to be turning. Four years, four long years of studying and learning and socializing (or not, as the case may be) and at the end, you’re supposed to be defined. Clear edges, the contours of who you’re supposed to be visible with minimal filling in left to do.

Mark doesn’t feel very defined. Oh, he knows where he fits in the machine of high school, his cog turning at a different speed, on a different level. At a distance. Nowhere near the heart of the machine.

He knows where he fits, knows his _place_.

But the difference between his place and the person he knows he’s meant to be (he’s bigger than this, bigger than the brick walls and fireproof doors that encase him) is gaping. It’s a valley, a canyon, and he’s feeling his way across it in the dark.

And then he meets Eduardo.

***

It’s a Tuesday lunchtime at the beginning of the semester and Dustin, as always, is making a nuisance of himself. Unfortunately for Mark, he doesn’t have Chris around to fulfil his duties as a Dustin-tamer, because he had some sort of important GSA meeting over their shared lunch period and bailed on him as soon as the bell rang. Mark is all for equal rights for every student and no discrimination and everything, but he feels that, in this instance, his needs are greater.

“Mark. Maaaaark. Marky Mark, why are you ignoring me, do my attempts to shorten your face have no effect on you?”

Mark glares at him then, looking up from where he has been determinedly stuffing spaghetti into his mouth, because what.

“What,” he says flatly, “does the length of my face have to do with _anything._ ”

Dustin grins widely at him, spaghetti hanging unattractively out of his mouth. “Your face,” he says, gearing up to whatever point he’s trying to make, “is _long_. Which is why I am trying to _shorten_ it. As your friend, it is my duty to cheer you up and talk to you about your feelings. Watch any rom-com and they will all prove my point.”

Mark thinks it’s a sign of too much exposure to his glare that Dustin doesn’t wither where he stands. Or sits. Dustin’s positioning is really not the point here. “I don’t need cheering up, I will cheer up as soon as you stop being obnoxious. And there is no universe where I would _ever_ talk to you about feelings.”

Dustin just grins triumphantly.

Mark should know by now that Dustin takes these things as a challenge. Dustin has never backed down about anything, not since second grade where he forced Chris to play with him and Mark through a combination of wheedling and sitting on his head until he gave in. Chris has been perfecting his long-suffering sigh ever since.

As expected, Dustin leans back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. Mark has just kicked the hornet’s nest. “Oh, Mark. Mark, Mark, Mark. I think it’s about time we had a talk about your _feelings_.”

Mark buries his head in his hands. “Why are you always like this when Chris isn’t around? What happened to the days when you were scared of me? I miss those days.”

Dustin waves a hand dismissively. “Those days were over as soon as I found out you sleep with a night light. That is not the point. The point is this, Marky Mark – you have feelings and you don’t like admitting it. This is not a healthy way of dealing with them and I am going to explain this to you with the help of a trusty metaphor.”

Sometimes Mark wants to go back in time and punch himself in the face for not running away when Dustin first came up to him and informed him that they were now friends and that he had no choice in the matter, he was just going to have to deal. His younger self made a lot of bad life choices.

Dustin continues, oblivious to (or probably just ignoring) Mark’s increasingly homicidal thoughts. “Think of your heart like a cupboard. No, _stop that_ ,” he warns, darting forward and grabbing Mark’s wrists midway to covering his ears, “this metaphor is _going places_. Your heart is a cupboard and, like all cupboards, it should be well stocked with enough space left over so that, when you open the door, things don’t fall on your head. Are you with me so far?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. Anyway, in this cupboard, there are cans of tuna – shut up, it’s relevant – that need to be opened. Because nobody likes sealed cans of tuna, they just sit in the cupboard and take up space and you can’t throw them away because they _never go off_. So you’re stuck with a cupboard full of tuna and no space for anything else except _resentment_. Which means you have to embrace the _feelings_ , Mark! _Nobody_ likes resentment-tuna!”

A beat.

“You can open your eyes now, Mark, it’s over.”

Mark lets out a breath and opens his eyes. “I swear, I am never eating lunch with you unaccompanied ever again.”

Dustin smiles. “You say that every time, Mark, but you love me really. You just won’t admit it because your feelings for me are inside one of the cans of tuna that you won’t open.”

What is his life.

“Um, excuse me? Is this seat taken?”

Later, Mark will swear he didn’t jump out of his skin at the sound of Eduardo’s voice and Eduardo will swear he did, grinning at him fondly so Mark doesn’t get embarrassed (he will go red anyway, but that has more to do with the grin than anything else). Dustin will back one or the other, depending on his mood and who last fed him sugar.

But the point is this – Eduardo asks to sit with them one Tuesday lunchtime. 

“Nope, it’s all yours,” Dustin says, grinning easily. “If you’re willing to deal with Mark, that is. He’s special and takes some getting used to.”

“I could say the same about you,” Mark mutters, flushing.

Eduardo sets his tray down opposite Mark, meeting his eyes and quirking a small smile. Mark’s stomach does something strange.

“It’s okay, Mark,” Dustin says reassuringly. “We accept you for who you are at this table. Right, Eduardo?”

Eduardo’s face does something complicated, then his smile widens marginally. “If these are the terms and conditions I need to agree to to be able to sit at this table, then by all means, yes.”

Dustin looks at Mark meaningfully, looks towards Eduardo and mouths _tuna, remember?_ at him. Mark knows what Dustin is getting at and he is completely wrong. There is no tuna here. Mark’s life is completely tuna free, except for the feeling of self-hatred seeing as he is now using Dustin’s metaphor. Luckily, Eduardo just looks amused. Dustin winks once (he is not smooth, why does he insist on thinking he’s smooth) and turns to Eduardo.

“So, Eduardo,” he says loudly. “How do you feel about computers?”

***  
The thing is this.

If Mark is a cog, set aside from the rest of the machine, doing his own thing and minding his own business, Eduardo is the heart of the system. It defies logic that a transfer student from Miami, starting his senior year in a new school, should be so well liked, but it’s impossible to find a single student that doesn’t like him. Him and his suits and leather satchels, gravity-defying hair and ridiculous eyes. When he smiles, it’s like a sunrise.

At least, that’s what Mark has heard. 

Anyway, moving on – Eduardo is loved by all, even by Miss Fincham, a history teacher notorious for disliking every single one of her students. He’s the kind of person that can effortlessly do those ridiculous handshakes (those ones that should come with some kind of user manual) without batting an eyelid and remember which one to do with which person. 

Mark and Eduardo are the kind of combination that does not compute, the equation that produces an error code every time. Physically, mentally, socially – they don’t _fit_. Their cogs are turning at different speeds. Their lines aren’t parallel, they’re diverging. They’re not supposed to _meet_.

Eduardo obviously didn’t get that memo.

Mark isn’t about to break it to him.

Call it a social experiment.

***

It becomes a thing.

At first it’s just every Tuesday during their shared lunch period. Eduardo always sits in the exact same spot opposite Mark, seemingly unfazed by his scowl. Dustin does most of the talking, as usual, with Eduardo answering politely, Chris mediating various arguments when he deems to show up and Mark helping the conversation along by not being too sarcastic.

It turns out Eduardo’s good at math, the kind of good that never gets anything lower than a 90 on his tests and actually has fun doing it. Mark isn’t ridiculously charmed by how enthusiastic he gets about the school’s math club, nor by the way his arms flail about ridiculously when he’s excited.

Eduardo, for some inexplicable reason, finds Mark amusing and doesn’t run away screaming the first time Mark makes an ill-advised jab at his ridiculous suits, grinning instead, saying something about keeping up appearances. It throws Mark off balance, like everything else about him. He’s nothing like he expected.

He decides to keep a closer eye on him. For science.

‘Keeping a closer eye on him’ turns into an impromptu study group that they decide to hold every Thursday (“How very Community,” Chris mutters the first week, causing Dustin to go into raptures because _Chris just made a pop culture reference_ ), which basically means the four of them bitching various teachers out in the library, interrupted only by the librarian shushing them or Chris yelling at them to _actually do some work, goddammit_.

“You really like Eduardo, don’t you,” Chris says one day, doing that terrifying thing where he creeps up behind Mark silently and then makes him self-actualize. Mark slams his locker door shut, swearing.

“Sorry,” Chris says unrepentantly. “You do, though. I can tell.”

Mark shrugs, turning to face him. “He’s tolerable, I guess.”

Chris has his ‘I know you’re lying but I will tolerate it out of the goodness of my heart because it’s not your fault you’re such a moron’ face on. Mark hates him slightly. “Uh huh. Sure. Because you’re so well known for spending as much time as possible with people you just about tolerate.”

Mark bristles. “What do you _want_ ,” he says sharply, “I have had the feelings talk from Dustin already, I do not need it from you as well-“

Chris raises his hands in mock surrender, smirking. “I’m just saying. You remember Dustin’s face when he met Alice for the first time, right?”

“What does that have to do with _anything_ ,” he snaps.

Chris just looks at him pityingly. “If you don’t know, then I’m not going to tell you. Just… you’re always welcome at the GSA, you know that, right?”

Mark is so confused. He has no idea where Chris is going with any of this. “I don’t –“

Sighing, Chris claps him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at lunch, Mark. Don’t forget your tuna.”

Mark freezes. How _could he_.

“ _Traitor_!” he yells at Chris’ retreating back.

Chris just waves.

***  
So feelings aren’t Mark’s strong point.

What does it matter, he’s not good at Home Ec either, but no one seems to care about _that_.

He blames society.

***

“Hey, Mark.”

It’s another Tuesday lunchtime and Eduardo’s already at their table, pushing at his lasagne with some distaste. Mark snorts.

“What did your food do to you this time?” he asks in lieu of greeting him like a normal person.

“What?” Eduardo asks, distracted.

Mark gestures to his face with his fork. “You’re wrinkling your nose.”

Eduardo flushes scarlet. “Oh. Um. That. The meat… have you seen the meat?”

Mark shakes his head. “I took the fish sticks.”

Eduardo grimaces. “Yeah,” he says sadly, “that would’ve been better. I swear to god, this looks like rat’s tails and I’m scared to put it in my mouth.”

Mark grins. “You’re just lucky you missed the casserole they did last year. It was supposed to be beef, but I’ve never had beef with that much gristle on it before.”

Groaning, Eduardo buries his face in his hands. “I want to hit you but I’m too nauseous,” he moans. “Where’s Dustin? I can usually get him to inflict violence on you.”

“Off sick. And Chris has another GSA meeting. I live to fight another day.”

Eduardo snorts, looking out from between his fingers.

“I’d like to see you try.”

And suddenly Mark is hit by everything at once, by Eduardo’s eyes shadowed behind his fingers; by the way his voice suddenly seems on a different register, darker, heavier; by the way he knows exactly what Eduardo’s smile looks like, knows it off by heart, but it still makes his stomach twist and his hands clench and his tongue feel heavy in his mouth.

Eduardo must see something in his face, because he freezes and lowers his hands slowly, a flush rising sluggishly from the collar of his jacket.

“I’ll have you know, I used to be junior fencing champion in my category,” Mark says, and his voice sounds different, further away. It trembles slightly.

“Only used to be?” Eduardo teases, his only tell the clenching and unclenching of his hands and the way he won’t quite meet Mark’s eyes. Mark doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants to sink into the floor and never come back. He never wants to look away.

A chair squeaks loudly somewhere close by and the moment is broken.

Mark breathes.

“Guess I found computers,” he says, smiling slightly, heart still beating double time. Eduardo raises an eyebrow, flush slowly receding.

“A Mark without computers,” he muses, grinning. “Did the universe implode?”

 

***

 

It’s a cold day in December when he finally starts to see what people are talking about.

“Mark! Mark, wait up!”

Mark looks up sharply at the sound of Eduardo’s voice, hand still resting on his locker combination, halfway through the routine of left turn, two right turns, _wrench_. The hallway is pretty much empty – Mark accidentally stayed long after the final bell, caught up in a coding assignment he was doing for extra credit. His IT teacher pretty much gives him free reign of the lab, but after a while even he came in, tapping his watch, and told Mark to pack up and go the fuck home.

It’s not a secret that Mark gets distracted when he’s coding. People should be used to it by now.

Eduardo is in front of him now, breathing heavily from all the running he’d apparently been doing. Mark obviously wasn’t going anywhere – he wonders what the rush is about. He leans against his locker, blinking once, twice. Eduardo’s shirt is gaping slightly, the shadowing of his collarbones a stark contrast to the golden flush of his skin. He isn’t staring. He isn’t.

Eduardo runs a hand through his hair and frowns slightly. “What?”

Okay, maybe he is.

He ignores the blush rising in his cheeks and shrugs because he knows it’s infuriating, and infuriating is safe right now. “Just wondering where the angry mob is. They were obviously hot on your heels.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot, Mark. I just wanted to catch you before you left.”

His breathing is slowing down and his smile is beginning to reappear. Mark can feel his heart beginning to beat faster in response. It’s another equation, the speed of his pulse quickening exponentially every time Eduardo’s smile appears.

It helps when he thinks of it like a math problem. Problems can be solved, they go away after a while. He can ignore the fact that this is not linear, that dividing by two on both sides will not give him x. That this is here to stay.

“Why? I wasn’t exactly sprinting off anywhere, Eduardo. These legs are not made for track and field and I highly doubt I could outrun you.”

Eduardo’s smile is softening with every word, changing to the face he uses whenever Mark says anything Mark-like, all sharp edges and jarring, quick tongue. Mark wants to patent that face and hang it up on his wall, show it to everyone who cares and more who don’t, say “see, this is mine, I made this, I _caused_ this.” 

He also wants to keep the rush it gives him forever and ever, the deep, tingling electricity from his toes to his chest, this… this _flying_ feeling, this weightlessness. He watches Eduardo’s hand curl around the strap of his satchel, sees the way he meets Mark’s eyes briefly before skittering away again, still managing to scorch themselves into his retina. He swallows, throat working to push down the lump that has somehow formed there. 

This energy, he could coast on it for days.

Eduardo opens his mouth to speak, meeting his eyes, and the moment shatters and reforms, tentative, fragile.

“I had a meeting with the principal until just now and saw you here. I just wondered,” and here he swallows, hand flexing on his satchel, “if you needed a ride home. I mean, I know you usually take the bus, but the last one left about 15 minutes ago. I saw it from the principal’s office.” He takes a breath and shrugs, offering a small smile. “My car’s right outside, it wouldn’t be a problem, I swear.”

Mark blinks, a helpless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He shoves his hands in his pockets, looks at his feet so he doesn’t have to deal with Eduardo’s eyes when he tries to speak.

“Yeah,” he says quickly. “I mean, yes, Wardo.”

He looks up quickly on the last word, voice breaking slightly on the last syllable, so he sees the name hit Eduardo full force. Sees the way his eyes widen, the tiny, almost imperceptible step backwards, like he’s trying to keep his balance, the small, helpless smile that he tries to hide behind his hand.

Mark can’t look. He can’t look away. He’s stuck in a constant paradox and all he can do is bite his lip in a futile effort to tamp down on the smile bubbling up from his chest.

Eduardo’s full-on grinning now, not even trying to hide it anymore. “Wardo, huh?” he says, testing the nickname out on his tongue, feeling his way around the syllables. 

Mark shrugs. “It’s shorter.” He can feel the flush slowly creeping up his neck and wonders whether the way Wardo ducks his head to rub at the back of his neck is an indicator that he notices as well.

“I like it,” he says quietly, quickly.

So do I, Mark doesn’t say, but I like you more.

He shuts his locker, ramming it with his shoulder to make sure it stays shut this time, and heaves his rucksack onto one shoulder. He looks at Wardo expectantly, stamping on the warmth spreading through his chest at the sight of him and his stupid hair. “Ready?”

“Please, I was born ready,” Wardo says, his grin easy now; back to their familiar back and forth, the fragility from before slowly draining away. Mark breathes out slowly.

They make their way down the corridor to the main doors, side by side, both pretending they aren’t sneaking glances at the other. Eduardo catches his eye just before the exit and grins sheepishly, knocking their shoulders together.

“Once more unto the breach, then?”

Mark snorts. “Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with you, I really do.”

Wardo just grins, the edges to his smile softening as he looks at Mark. “You and me both, Zuckerberg. You and me both.”

***

The drive to Mark’s house is charged with unspoken tension, the silence broken only by Wardo asking which way to turn at the crossroads.

Mark watches Eduardo, though, watches the streetlights bounce off the planes of his cheekbones, forming hollows and casting new shadows. Eduardo is a careful driver, hands perfectly placed at ten to two, exactly 5 mph under the speed limit, slowing at every traffic light. Mark wants to tease him about it, make some sort of joke about him being every driving teacher’s dream, but he can’t get his tongue to work the way he wants it to.

His cupboard is so full of tuna it’s not even funny.

They pull up in Mark’s driveway. The stillness is complete without the engine and it hangs heavy in the air like snow. Eduardo glances over at Mark, his face doing something complicated.

“This is me,” Mark says, his words crystallizing above their heads. “I should-“

Wardo seems to be fighting with himself, determination warring with something else. Mark watches him let out a breath, closing his eyes briefly. “I… yeah,” he finishes, giving in. “Just… yeah.”

Are you okay, Mark wants to ask, what do you want to tell me, please tell me, I can’t stand this no-man’s land where there are no rules and no one wants to make the first step.

His tongue, as ever, is uncooperative.

He makes to open the door when suddenly Eduardo grabs his wrist, cold fingers leaving a ring of fire on his skin. He jumps, head turning quickly, jarringly, to look at where their hands are joined, eyes flicking between Eduardo’s face and his wrist. Wardo smiles helplessly.

“Mark,” he says, voice fragile in the semi-darkness, “Mark, I… I can’t, can I –”

“Wardo,” Mark says sharply, meeting his eyes helplessly, watching Wardo’s struggle playing out on his face. His fingers tighten around Mark’s wrist. He looks at Mark searchingly, throat working, as if whatever he’s trying to tell him is stuck there. 

His heart is beating so quickly, thrumming in his throat. They’re running along a knife’s blade and if they stop, if they slow down, it will cut their feet into ribbons.

Outside, a light switches on, startling them both.

They blink. They fall. The moment shatters.

“Mark? Is that you? I expected you back an hour ago!”

His mom is on the porch, arms wrapped around herself against the cold. She’s frowning in Mark’s general direction, though she probably can’t see him through the reflection in the tinted windows. Wardo drops his wrist like it’s burning him.

“Shit,” he mutters, “I have to go, I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Wardo won’t meet his eyes. “Yeah. See you.”

Mark wrenches the door open, feeling his stomach turn cold. He wants to punch something. He slams the door shut and doesn’t think of Eduardo’s face when he grabbed his wrist.

He doesn’t look back when he hears the engine start up again, nor when hears the car reverse and head out into the street. His mom catches sight of his face as he approaches and she softens slightly, sighing.

“Oh, honey,” she says, worry mixed with warmth mixed with _home_.

Mark lets himself lean against her and closes his eyes. Just this once.

***

He has been typing furiously away at his laptop for the past however many hours. His fingers are starting to cramp and the lines of code on his screen are becoming indistinguishable blurs, black streaks against the glare. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t. He can’t stop, he feels like he’s full to the brim and if he stops typing for one second he’s going to reach tipping point.

Feelings. What’s the fucking point. Dustin can stuff his tuna cans of feelings back in his own metaphorical cupboard of love, Mark doesn’t want them.

He lets out a shuddering breath, his fingers stilling on the keyboard. They really fucking hurt. Closing his eyes, he tries to will the pain away with the power of his mind, but his mind, as always, seems to take some sadistic pleasure in doing the exact opposite of what he wants. His joints ache. He really doesn’t want to know how long he’s been sat at his desk, wired in and thinking hard about nothing at all. Neither does he want to imagine the face Wardo would be making if he was here to see Mark like this.

Fucking. No. He doesn’t want to think about Wardo AT ALL, no fucking way, he is going to go in for a voluntary lobotomy if this carries on. He groans, letting his head fall heavily onto his keyboard. He’ll have to edit his code later, but he doesn’t care. He just wants everything to stop.  
 _Thwack_.

Mark sits bolt upright, wincing as his spine cracks. The sound is coming from his window. Mark may not be an expert in domestic matters, but he’s pretty sure that’s not a healthy sound for a window to make. He exchanges a look of horror with the row of _jhkkkkkkkkkkkkhkjjjjjjjhkhjk_ that follows his meticulously typed up code. What the actual-

_Thwack._

Mark gets up, his chair tipping dangerously as he pushes past, and… gapes. 

Inexplicably, his window is now covered with a substantial amount of _snow_. It wasn’t even _snowing_ , for fuck’s sake, none of this makes any sense _whatsoever_.

From somewhere below his window, a muffled voice starts up angrily.

“Mark, I swear to god, if you’re pretending to be asleep I will throw a rock next time, I am not kidding, it’s _freezing_ out here.”

Mark would recognize that voice anywhere. He freezes and then, against his better judgement and any remaining survival instincts, wrenches the window open. 

“What if I’d actually been asleep?” he asks, frowning. “Would you have just thrown the rock anyway? That’s really not socially accepted behaviour, Wardo. You’d have no sympathy in court.”

And then Mark realises what he just said and. Fuck. That’s _Wardo_. Standing in _Mark’s garden_. Holding what Mark assumes to be a rock in his gloved hands and surrounded by snow. And that’s another point, where the hell did all this snow come from?

“Where the hell did all this snow come from?” he asks. Wardo’s face is doing something complicated – Mark assumes it’s feelings related, because hello, it’s _Eduardo,_ and ignores the answering twist in his stomach. 

“ _Mark,_ ” he says quietly and Mark isn’t going to break, he isn’t, he refuses to weaken in the face of ridiculous snow dusted, gravity defying hair and big eyes. Instead, he asks “Where the hell did _you_ come from?” and ignores the tremble in his voice, the slight break on the word _you._

Eduardo smiles uncertainly and adjusts his scarf, clearing his throat. 

Mark is so, so fucked. His cupboard is back and fully stocked with tuna cans and there is nothing he can do about it. Fucking _Brazilians._

“I just…” Eduardo starts, shoving his hands in his pockets. He shivers involuntarily. “Look, can I come up? I mean, I know it’s late and you’re- I mean, this would just be a lot easier if I could do this someplace where my hands aren’t in danger of getting frostbite.”

“You’re wearing _gloves,_ ” Mark points out, ignoring the way his heart started pounding the moment Eduardo opened his mouth.

He could swear Eduardo flushes in the dim light from Mark’s open window. “I have bad circulation, okay? I just… just let me come up, Mark, I’ll explain in a minute.”  
Mark swallows hard, the sudden lump in his throat making it hard to speak. 

His first instinct is to slam the window shut, draw the curtains and burrow under the duvet until all these feelings finally leave. He can’t deal with this, he doesn’t know how, he never had to until the day Wardo showed up at his table in the cafeteria with his North Face jacket and his ridiculous sunrise of a smile. But Mark’s first instinct is always the one with too many sharp edges, the one with _consequences_ much worse than the few words it took to cause them.

His second instinct is to leave the window open.

He leaves the window open.

“Wardo,” he says helplessly. Wardo understands. His smile is brighter than a thousand sunrises, tremulous and uncertain but unstoppable, uncontrollable.

“Yeah?” he breathes, his head still tilted to look up at Mark. He must be getting a crick in his neck. He doesn’t look like he cares. His face is painful to look at in the best way, all hope and honesty and things Mark is not going to think about right now because there are only so many things he can deal with at one time.

“I’m coming down to you,” Mark says decidedly, before he can have any more scary thoughts about Wardo’s wellbeing and the way it matters to him.

***

In the two minutes it takes for Mark to find a sweater and locate the house keys without waking the rest of the family, it starts to snow again. He locks the door behind him, shoving his hands into his pockets and scowling at the sky for the spectacle it is going to make of his hair. He considered wearing flip flops just to see the expression on Eduardo’s face, but decided against it in the end. What. He does have _some_ survival instincts.

He rounds the corner and there Eduardo is, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, shivering almost imperceptibly. Mark falters slightly, his nerves singing.  
He coughs, because he has always been smooth.

Eduardo turns around slightly too quickly from where he’s been looking up at Mark’s window. “Mark,” he says again. Mark stops where he is, about two metres away from where Wardo is standing. He fidgets slightly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“You wanted to talk to me,” he says, his voice sharp, always sharp when it needs to be soft. “So talk.”

Instead of running away like a normal person, Wardo’s face does the complicated thing again that Mark can never quite decipher. He smiles, a small smile, soft, and Mark has never wanted him more than in this moment and he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

“I…” Wardo starts, stopping abruptly and running a hand through his hair. “Christ, this is so fucking difficult.”

Snow is falling softly all around them, filling the air with a kind of tangible silence. Mark shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, eyes never straying from Eduardo’s face. He feels like he’s going to burst out of his skin.

“Why did you sit with us that day?” he asks, words flying out of his mouth with no prompting from his brain. He bites his lip hard, but it’s too late.  
Eduardo’s eyes are fixed on Mark’s face. He looks terrified. “Mark-“

“Answer the question, Wardo.”

It comes out too jarring, all jagged edges and rough corners, demanding. He winces.

Wardo looks so frustrated with himself, frustrated and scared. “I thought it was obvious. I thought I was being obvious.”

Mark is completely flummoxed. He’s cold and tired and he doesn’t understand anything and Wardo is still here, still looking at him like he can’t quite help himself and Mark is missing something here.

“I don’t understand why you sat with us,” Mark repeats. “I don’t.”

Eduardo lets out a trapped breath and looks him square in the eye. “I wanted to sit with _you._ ”

Mark blinks. “Why?”

“Because…” Eduardo laughs almost despite himself, “God, I had this all planned out before and now you’re here and everything just goes out of the window. I can’t…” He screws his eyes shut for a second, takes a deep breath and opens them again. “Look, I’m going to do something and you can’t hate me for it, okay?”

Mark is starting to see where this is going and his heart is hammering out of his chest. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t-

And then Wardo is crossing the space between them in two strides and kissing him.

(He _can._ )

It takes Mark a few seconds to catch on and Wardo pulls away quickly, worriedly, saying “Is this, I shouldn’t,” but Mark just glares at him, “Shut up, Wardo,” and pulls him back in, hands shaking.

Eduardo’s lips are cold and chapped but Mark doesn’t care, can’t care, because he’s smiling against his mouth and his hands are fisted in Mark’s and he lets out this little whimper when Mark accidentally bites his lip and they’re both trembling, both holding on too tight. Mark is falling, he’s flying, he’s rooted to the ground by the hand on his waist and he has never been this happy.

Somewhere, Dustin is fist-pumping without knowing why.

It could be hours or minutes before he pulls away, out of breath and panting, and Eduardo is just looking at him, shaken, lips swollen and hair mussed up. His grin could light the sun.

“So… I’m going to take that as a sign that we’re on the same page.”

Mark rolls his eyes, not even trying to stop smiling. “Stop being an idiot, Wardo, or I’ll shove snow down your jacket.

Wardo winds his arms around Mark’s waist, pulling him in so their foreheads are touching. Of course he would be such a sap. Mark disapproves, except for the fact that he doesn’t. 

“Do you understand now?” Eduardo asks. There’s snow on his eyelashes. Mark can’t look away.

“I don’t know,” he manages. “Maybe you could demonstrate again.”

Eduardo laughs and then there are gloved hands on his face and no one says anything for a long time.

The snow falls on.


End file.
